Space Drifters
by FireflySummer
Summary: En route to Xandar from the other end of the universe, Rocket and Groot just happen to be passing through Chitauri space. It's not uncommon to find bodies (or parts of them) floating about in these areas...but they certainly didn't expect to find somebody alive. Loki, on the other hand, was not expecting to be rescued by a mutant raccoon a talking tree. Still, it could be worse.


The first thing Loki realized was that it was _not cold_. He wasn't sure if it was a winter chill or a blistering heat or anything in between, because nothing within that range of emotions came close to the absolute cold, the _true cold_ of the void. Jotunheim would have been considered a tropical paradise compared to the absolute _nothingness_ that had surrounded him for too long.

The sudden rush of _feeling_ swept over him for seconds, minutes, hours…time had no meaning in the void, and he had forgone it so long that he almost forgot the familiar feeling of its passage. These sensations, absent for so long, engulfed him in a blurry haze that almost obscured the sounds and sights that lay just beyond.

He cracked open an eye, and immediately shut it again as the too-strong light accosted his maladjusted eyes. In the brief second, he caught sight of two blurs—one small and close, another towering overhead. Only then did he realize that there were noises in the blurs around him. More than noises…_voices_. With a little concentration, they refined and sharpened until the words began to make sense.

"…course we could have left him there." The words were harsh and caustic, but the tone bore little more than annoyance.

"I am Groot." This voice came as a deep hum that rattled along to the ragged beat of his heart.

"I don't see why not," spat back the first voice, "We don't got enough room on this ship to pick up every straggler we find floating around in deep space."

"I am Groot."

"Of _course_ I know most of 'em are dead already. Now that you mention it, whatchoo suppose he is, to survive like that?" Loki could feel a shadow falling across him, and he felt something small, surprisingly soft, and definitely _not_ human touching his face. Panic surged, and he tried to move, tried to strike out. But his limbs and magic both failed to come to his aid, too tired and over-exerted from his time in the nothingness.

The world began fading out, the words and sounds becoming muffled once more until they blurred together into a blissful gray. He couldn't sleep yet, not when he still ran the risk of being jettisoned back into the void, but his treacherous body was leaving him little choice.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~

The next time Loki woke, the lights were dimmer and his senses were keener. He was aware that a corrugated metal surface was jutting uncomfortably into his back, through his tattered armor. (He also noted that somebody had rolled up a dirty piece of cloth beneath his head to try to cushion him from the bumping and jarring of the travel.)

Opening his eyes still hurt, but not as bad as before, and he could make out shapes. It looked like he was in some sort of storage area, laid like cargo among the unmarked boxes. Maybe, that's what he was.

"I am Groot." One of the silhouettes, which had previously held so still that he did not notice it, suddenly spoke up and lumbered forward. Loki almost shrank back at the sight of the enormous figure, thoughts of _jotun_ and _giant_ burning through his mind at a terrible pace. The creature, however, appeared to note his panic, and stayed where it was, crouching into a sitting position atop one of the sturdier boxes.

The two studied each other for a moment, black eyes on green, trying to make heads or tails of each other.

"Well, well, well." A second individual had entered the room, carrying a box at least twice its size, and depositing it on a stack in the corner. From his angle on the floor, Loki thought it looked like a small, furry animal wearing an orange jumpsuit. "Good morning, princess. I hope you've had your beauty rest."

Loki narrowed his eyes, glancing back and forth between the odd couple. Brains and brawn. It was a combination that he knew from personal experience to be quite deadly. (At that thought, something panged deep inside, but he buried the thought.)

The creature didn't seem to notice his inner monologue, instead scurrying over to the tree and mounting it in an attempt to look intimidating.

"Now, listen here. The name is Rocket, and this big dummy is Groot." The creature narrowed his eyes and grinned in a way that showed a row of sharp teeth. "And this here is our first-class vessel. Now, we don't take to stowaways round here; don't got time to return 'em to their proper place. We did you a favor by picking up your sorry ass, which means that you currently have the status of 'cargo'. Which means we get to sell you off to the highest bidder at the next port."

"I am Groot." Loki didn't need a translator to hear the mortification in the words. He tried to repress a chuckle, only to realize that his throat was too dry to make so much as a squeak.

Rocket rolled his eyes. "Correction. This idiot here seems to have taken a liking to you. Therefore, you have been promoted from extra cargo to team pet, you got it? That still don't mean that we won't pawn you off as soon as we find who's out looking for you."

_How did you know?_ There was an unspoken question there that Loki didn't necessarily want answered, but Rocket, who was apparently a master at hearing things not said, grinned at him maliciously regardless.

"Don't play dumb with me," Rocket said, giving a fake laugh, "We found you free-floating through Chitauri-space. There aren't many species that can do that without imploding on themselves, which pretty much narrows it down to Asgardian space. And you don't find someone out of the Nine unless they're running from something these days."

With that charming impression, Rocket turned and stalked out of the room, leaving Groot humming to himself. In all honesty, Loki couldn't bring himself to care. If he was sold off at the next port, it wouldn't be too difficult to escape. Going back to Asgard was certainly the least favorable outcome…but really, anything was better than being tossed back into the void. It was with this thought, and the sound of a giant tree-alien humming, that he drifted back to sleep.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Even before Rocket's little speech, Loki had had no illusions about his status aboard the vessel. And so, it came as great surprise to him that anybody was seeing to it that he returned to health…and that didn't even take into consideration the fact that he was being nursemaided by a walking, talking tree.

Really, if anybody but a couple of not-so-hardened criminals from the far end of the known universe had been there, Loki would rather have died than been seen like that. And really, the way that Groot went about caring for others gave him secondhand embarrassment. But on the other hand, it was kind of…nice, to have a silent companion looking out for your best interests. Even if said silent companion did not thoroughly understand that he did not drink water by absorbing it through his skin. (That had only happened once, and Rocket had chided him thoroughly after he'd gotten through with a fit of laughter that had left him gasping for air.)

The void had left him embarrassingly weak, and he felt like an infant as he tried to walk on his atrophied muscles. And although Groot followed him like a worried mother hen, it felt _good_ to be moving on his own again. To be in control of his course and direction.

Once on his feet, he took advantage of the little space the ship offered, trying to reclaim the strength that he had lost. There was not nearly enough space for that much exercise, but he liked being able to wander to the front of the ship, to see the beauty of the void from a place that it could not reach him.

Rocket apparently alternated between three positions: piloting, building, and grooting (if that was a thing, but there was no word in the all-tongue that could properly describe the nearly-mute tree creature). Sometimes he would do a little of all three, talking idly to Groot and entirely forgetting that Loki was also present.

Or so Loki thought, because one day Rocket stopped mid-dialogue and looked up from the piece he was building. Loki had been standing, leaning against the door frame and listening to the banter while his eyes drifted to the stars beyond the glass shields, but became incredibly aware that the attention of the two other tenants was on him.

"Yes?" he asked, trying not to sound caustic, despite feeling himself bristle automatically. (How many times had he been submitted to those looks, the mistrust and disbelief that he would ever listen in for something other than personal gain.)

"If you're going to stand there looking gobsmacked," Rocket replied, "You may as well come and help hold this down while I attach it." He motioned to the machine and complex of wires before him.

"Why can't you ask Groot?" asked Loki, surprised at how quickly the defensiveness dropped away, almost-normalcy taking its place. Almost without thinking, he wandered forward and took a seat beside Rocket and his unholy machine.

"Cuz the idiot's flammable, that's why." Rocket said. Loki looked ready to protest, but he was already tacking down a half dozen wires. "There now, don't move, otherwise you'll lose your eyebrows." Loki gritted his teeth and let Rocket do his work, completing whatever-it-was in a timely manner. When he'd finished, Loki got to his feet so fast that it made his head spin and muscles ache. Halfway through his retreat, Rocket's voice stopped him.

"See that, Groot?" he asked, although his voice was just loud enough for Loki to hear. "He's graduated from team pet to monkey boy. Aren't you proud of him?"

~o~o~o~o~o~o~

His magic was recovering too, but far more slowly than his muscles. It made sense, when he considered how much had been required to sustain him in the voice. It was returning, though; however, the thought that he might use it to fight off his captors (rescuers?) before they reached their next point of destination only barely crossed his mind.

The recovery of his magic was not the only change; Rocket's threats to sell him off at the next port were becoming less common as time went by. He'd never asked questions or demanded any answers from Loki, even when he'd been weak and in no position to resist. Loki returned the favor, never asking similar questions of them. Instead, they fell into a strange routine where the three kind of gravitated around each other.

In truth, the longer that they drifted, the more distant thoughts of Asgard became, replaced entirely with this new existence with his rescuers (friends?).

~o~o~o~o~o~o~

"Hey monkey boy. You any good with a gun?" Rocket was overseeing a new project, and Loki again found himself tangled in wires and gears. Although he'd never admit it, there was a…magic about it, the way that the components could move together. At the very least, it improved the mobility in his hands, and so he threw himself into the projects with a gusto that Rocket apparently approved of.

"No," Loki replied.

"That's a shame," he said. "And here I was thinking of promoting you again. But you're no good if you're useless in a fight." The remark was casual, but enough to make Loki stop what he was doing and look him in the eyes.

"Why."

"Why what?"

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, everything there was to ask thoroughly encased in those five words.

"Cuz I've been watching you, and you're useless. You don't pull your weight around here, so I can't imagine anybody ever putting a bounty on your head higher than a few units. But I figure, if you know how to use a gun or something, you look humanoid enough to do us some real good in the bounty hunting circles. But no, turns out you're useless after all, monkey boy."

"I never said I couldn't fight."

"Oh really. And if you can't do a gun, what _can_ you do?"

"Knives."

Rocket crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. "Oh really. What good are knives in a gunfight?"

Loki reacted impulsively, snapping his fingers. There was a flash of green smoke, and a knife materialized in his outstretched hand, summoned from one of the pocket-dimensions he stored his knick-knacks in.

He expected Rocket to be shocked, or at least a bit wary, but the small creature only shrugged. It was quite possibly the most anticlimactic moment of his life, as though he'd known the whole time that he was harboring one of the more powerful sorcerers in the Nine Realms.

And maybe, Loki realized, he had known. They'd both known. Maybe that's why they'd never asked, because they'd known, and realized that they were all the same. An animal with the mind of a genius. A tree with the soul of a god. A jotun who thought himself a prince. Outcast, unwanted monsters, each in his own right.

"Right, well, here's the gig," Rocket said, kicking up his tiny feet, "We'll be landing on Xandar pretty soon here. It's a high class joint, so I hope you can magic yourself into looking less like a space hobo, otherwise you'll draw attention."

"I'll wager I could be wearing my mother's drapes, and still draw no more attention than you on your best days."

"What was that?" Rocket spat, "Monkey boy is getting pissy. No talking back to the captain until you've been promoted, got it? And a big ol' bounty is the first step to promotion, you hear me?"

Loki turned back to the mess of wires, thoughts of the home he left behind only a gray shadow compared to the seemingly endless horizon that now lay before him. And, for the first time in what seemed like forever, he smiled.

**A/N: This entire story was, of course, built on the idea of Rocket and Groot picking up Loki before Thanos gets to him. I'm going with the idea that a lot of his megalomania from Avengers is a direct result of being pulled out of the void after being shattered emotionally and physically, and being put into a less-than-nurturing environment (that may or may not have involved physical torture and/or emotional manipulation and abuse). Rocket and Groot are hardly ideal, but Groot is rather nurturing.**


End file.
